Tory MPs from different factions then spent days openly denouncing their opponents inside the party.

After chancellor George Osborne’s “omnishambles” budget of 2012, the Tories resolved never to make such dangerous mistakes again. They have now done much worse, with some Tory MPs dubbing this an “Ozzyshambles” budget (see box, right).

The Daily Mail newspaper’s headline on Monday of this week was “Civil war engulfs Tories”.

The Sun newspaper’s Trevor Kavanagh wrote, “David Cameron is fighting for his life. George Osborne is already dead meat.”

Osborne was previously hot favourite to be the next Conservative leader, and the central economic figure in the bosses’ campaign to stay in the EU.

Now he is a shrunken and damaged figure, vulnerable to his internal enemies.

Duncan Smith said he was resigning because the budget cut benefits to disabled people as the rich were pampered with tax cuts.

Budget

Yet his resignation letter began, “I’m incredibly proud of the welfare reforms that the government has delivered over the past five years.”

He did not object to the latest cuts in the pre-budget cabinet. And his department issued news of the cuts a week before the budget.

Less than a year after their election “triumph” the Tories are tearing themselves apart.

All the strikers and campaigners who defied the Tories for the last six years played a part in the government’s present distress.

The resistance has not been so widespread or so sustained that it could block and break Cameron.

Yet it made the Tories’ task more difficult.

Large sections of people have always seen their austerity as class-driven inhumanity.